


A Not So Empty Threat

by whisperuponwind



Category: Original Work
Genre: At least I think they're zombies, Dehumanization, Friendship, Gen, Horror, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 03:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7491687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whisperuponwind/pseuds/whisperuponwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His thoughts contradicted themselves, and yet only one was winning out. I have to stop!...I need to keep going.</p><p>_________________</p><p>For Trystan, the day started out as normally as it could have. It staying that way, mundane, was all that he could have hoped for. And yet, that was just wishful thinking. In his twisted and convoluted world, today was the day that shit either hit the fan, or the day that he would (very narrowly) side step it and race on to live another day. </p><p>Only time will tell which will win out over the other. </p><p>However, how much time does he have left--regardless of his prognosis?</p><p>Today would definitely be different...that's all that he really, actually knew to be true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Not So Empty Threat

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! So, this is the first fic that I am posting on here and I really hope that everyone likes it. Of course, there is a (very loud) cynic inside of me who is thinking that no one will enjoy it, and so if anyone wants to be a dear and alleviate a poor writer's fears, then please feel free to comment. I appreciate all of your support, whether it be constructive criticism or an extreme love for my writing (wishful thinking most likely), and will try to comment back ASAP. 
> 
> Just to help you understand the backstory of this fic a little bit: My roommate and I became obsessed with the Wii Resident Evil games last year, so I decided to take a crack at writing a fic centered around the very popular theme of zombies for my Creative Writing class and just hoped that my gory, evil thoughts were good enough to impress my classmates and my TA. I think I did an okay job...On the evilness, at least.
> 
> All of the text in italics is going to be in first person and it will either be the main character, Trystan's thoughts, or a flashback of Trystan's. Hopefully, it won't be too confusing, but if it is, then that is something I would really like to hear about.
> 
> I haven't placed any in-depth tags on this fic because I can't think of any triggers that could be, well triggered, by this fic, and so please let me know if that is false. This fic is also un-beta'd, so sorry for any errors (something else I wouldn't mind reading about). 
> 
> And lastly, I just wanna say thank you very much to anyone who gets to the end of this fic and I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. 
> 
> I love you all,
> 
> WUW
> 
> P.S. I still have to edit some (and clarify parts), so I'll get on that soon...I was just really excited to post something :)

**A Not So Empty Threat**

 

Trystan woke up to a brighter atmosphere than he was used to. His face scrunched up in denial, wishing for daylight to darken and to be doused like an uncertain flame. A new day had begun—a day marking the sunrise of his future. He rolled over in his bed, contemplating the frightful expectations of the day. His breaths echoed into his ratty blanket and lumpy pillow. A warm breeze rocked against his face with every shaky exhale.

“I guess I should get up,” he whispered to himself. He was already dreading taking those first few steps away from his warm bed. He let loose a hefty sigh and then, before sitting up, he began his countdown with weary resignation, “5, 4, 3, 2--”

“Haaaaaappy birthday, bro!” The banging of his door against the wall barely registered to Trystan. Instead, it was the loud bellow that accompanied it that had him resting his face against his calloused palm. He started rubbing the drowsiness out of his eyes with one hand while the other kept trying to bat away the annoying arm that was trying to ruffle his bedridden hair.

“How the hell can you be this excited in the mornings?” Trystan grumped out with an irritated grimace. It was always surprising to him how lively his best friend could act in the mornings and then be in desperate need of a shot of adrenaline by two o’clock.

“How the hell could you not be? Today’s the day, man! The day where all your wishes come true and all that jazz. It’s also the day where that doctor gets to take out that stick that’s always been stuck up your ass.” _Jackass._

“Maybe you’re the one with the stick stuck up _your_ ass,” Trystan grumbled out with a slight frown on his face. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be nice to me today; it being my last day and all?”

“Don’t be stupid. Nothing bad’s gonna happen; not if I can help it. Now, what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna get your lazy ass up out of bed, take a shower, and then you’re gonna go to that stupid, past-his-expiration-date doctor, take your test; and then, when you pass, we’ll give him one hell of a middle fingered salute. _Capiche_ , birthday boy?”

 _Of course Ash isn’t taking this seriously. Why should I expect any different? What exactly does he have to be afraid of? He’s already passed all of his post-exam checkups, so he can crack as many jokes as he wants._ _He doesn’t get to make light of today. After all, I didn’t make fun of him when he was the one shaking like a leaf in a storm. At least_ I _haven’t shit myself. Today_ was _a big deal--the biggest of deals. Today might just be the last big_ deal _of my life. “_ Huh, what a depressing thought,” he chuckled darkly to himself.

“What? What’d you say?”

“Oh nothing. I was just congratulating you on being able to string together so many words. I guess today _is_ a day of miracles after all.”

“Hardy har har. You just wait!--I might not be able to kick your ass today, but tomorrow, you’re fair game man.” Trystan shrugged one of his shoulders and grinned conspiratorially to himself. He knew Ash would never go through with his threat. He was the big brother he had never wanted, never asked for, and could never live without. He was pretty much all he had left. _Except, I’m not all that he has left. After the Rec-test today, neg or pos, Ash won’t be left alone. Small mercies, I guess._

The Rec-test was designed to weed out those select few who carried the Reciden Virus. Everyone feared it. A healthy trepidation slithers into everyone’s subconscious on this day--this day of questions, of answers.

 _And so me being all maudlin right now is totally precedented; Ash can just be an insensitive jerk sometimes - I can’t let it get to me. All that matters right now is that I prepare myself for whatever happens--or that doesn’t happen._ _No matter what - tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I will begin. Only the ending can be the start._

The Reciden Virus was a pore-seeping disease that burned away one's sense of identity—that burned away one's sense of self. Nearly fifteen years ago an untested biohazard was leaked to the public. No investigations had been organized to locate patient zero because by the time the news had reached the corners of the world, there had been no scientists left to counteract it; even if there had been, it was already too late. Too much of the population had already been overtaken by the virus, and soon it seemed like quarantine was the only solution left.

Compounds had been built across the country for those not infected, those still gasping for salvation. This included the compound where Trystan and Ash lived. It was high up in the mountains, parceled away from all the cities and derelict communities of the past. Around the perimeter was a steel fence, nearly twenty feet high, and at the top of it was barbed wire. That fence was the first thing that was built here, and it was also the most risky. There had been countless men and women killed during those first two years of construction, but back then, there had always been a steady inflow of newcomers seeking a place to call home, and so the number of humans that lived here didn’t dwindle as much as it could have. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case anymore.

The compound still ran its broadcast every day, with its location and its safe-haven status being aired tirelessly with the hope that more people would come. Sadly, the number of people who had actually answered the call within the last decade or so had become nearly nonexistent. It was believed that they were not alone in this graveyard of an earth, yet some days it really felt like they were.

A demoralizing thought crossed his mind at that moment. _Even if we had lost all contact with the outside world, we would still be anything but alone._

The first transmission that had aired after humans began shifting and changing was, “ _Our citizens have become rabid. Their touch is the infection—their scalding touch is our death._ ” Nobody realized what it meant at the time, but now they knew. They knew it all too well.

There were things out there. Things out in the dark that fed upon their fears; that fed upon their futures. They were the carrion birds of their lives—of their tomorrows. They were the inhuman—they were the Scalders.

At first, when the virus began manifesting in humans, it was only those who had been bitten or scratched by the infected that became Scalders, but then the Reciden Virus began manifesting (or at least becoming noticeable in their blood work) _,_ in those turning nineteen, in those who had never even seen a Scalder before. It had become a rarity for those who had come into contact with a Scalder to be turned; instead, they were just murdered. Perhaps the virus had learned to adapt itself so that it could be spread through the air or the water. Perhaps it had realized that it had done its job so well that it needed to find a new source of transmission, one that leaned more towards chance rather than circumstance.

Either way, there was always the possibility that the last thing ever heard in this life would either be the hoarse screams of families, or the shaky exhale of a friend’s last breath: unhinged and dangling in midair, irrelevant to the twisted psyche of this world. The Reciden Virus was an anvil over their heads, an Atlas-sized problem on their shoulders, and the cruelest of jokes on their minds—and it showed no signs of slowing down or stopping.

A Scalder’s touch was like a burning flare; it was so hot that it was nearly frostbite bitter. It burned like a blaze—as red and as sparked with anger as a furnace. It was a cruel caress, a salty concoction being hard-pressed into a wound, unflinching and irreversible to all those unlucky enough for it to consume. However, their touch was not the only thing that made them deadly. They also had the inhuman strength; the sharpest nails and teeth anyone had ever seen.

Trystan had only seen one Scalder in his life, and it was on the day that he truly became an orphan. Screams of overlapping sorrow had torn their way out of his throat and had left behind a sour bitterness, like bile, when the screams could no longer be spoken or heard. He could still taste the horrid, regurgitated liquid upon his tongue whenever thoughts of his mother, his only living relative from birth, was snuffed out like a flame, leaving only embers behind.

Trystan was four when the world was changed. It was like a switch had been thrown across the sky, a simultaneous takeover of those infected, and _no one_ was spared the heartache.

#

_My neighbor, Jared, was the one who had rescued me that night. He had heard the screams from inside of our house and had come to investigate. He had found me cowering, in fetal position: a sobbing mess of tears and of snot within the loose embrace of my mother’s outstretched, cooling arm. Her other arm had been drenched in the color of death. Her hand was resting next to the serrated knife that she had dropped, still pointing toward her assailant. It too, was probably just as cold as my mother: the tool of her choosing, following her swiftly into the afterlife._

“Ma-mommy said to me to hide. She said I be safe if I hide and I-I not come out. She said she protect me,” _I had babbled nonsensically, with hiccups being interspersed between my words._

_He had looked at me with a lost, weary look upon his slack-jawed face, his eyes beseeching me, a four year old, to reassure him what he was seeing—what he had seen, could not be true. My neck creaked over and over again as I turned my head away from my mother and toward the stranger in our house, back and forth, until I didn’t know which was my mother and which was the stranger. My eyesight was a misty, unreliable source at that moment._

_Next to my mother, on the opposite side of where I was laying, was another body. It was a grotesque figure; a mockery of the humanity it had once represented before its body had been twisted and mangled and left to rot upon our crimson-washed, white tiled floors. Its head was like a cannonball, leaving numerous streaks behind it as it had rolled away._

_The stranger turned slowly, a full 180 degrees, and stalked into our living room. His footsteps were as sorrowful and as pale as a ghost’s. My porous eyes tracked his movements, hyper-aware of my surroundings: an animal trapped in a new environment, unable to take anything in._

_He returned a moment later with a blanket from our couch. It was the same fleece blanket that my mother had wrapped me in just the night before so that she could tell me covetous stories about my father. They were the only tangible connection that I had had left of him. She had also told me stories about faraway worlds where the heroes would live and prosper, maybe saving a damsel or two; while the villains, the monsters, would all perish._

_He had dropped the blanket over my mother, covering her, head and all._ “Come here, son. It’s alright now. Your momma is just sleepin'. She’ll come find us when she warms up a bit and gets better, okay?” _His voice had been pacifying, sounding like someone who had known that one wrong word could’ve be the difference between a child’s collaboration or their distrust. He had picked me up into his strong embrace, his shirt clinging to my bare skin. It felt rough and flaky in places, and carried me away from my mother. My grubby little arms stretched towards her in the air. My eyes tracked the staticness of her chest as if waiting for a rise and fall that would never happen. She was immobile. She was still, like a statue I had once seen, yet not nearly as gray or as peaceful in her solitude as it had been._

_It wasn’t until later that I understood what the all-encompassing, cloying smell upon my rescuer was. At the time, I was in too much of a shock to notice that a dark stain had spread across his thin t-shirt as he had held me to him. I didn’t realize his aftershave had been masked by an iron-like scent that could only come from one source and one source only: blood._

_As I got older, I learned that his wife had become infected and that he had run from his house in order to escape from what he had done—from what he had been made to do. His wife had gauged four deep scratches into his chest when she had transformed with no warning and with no mercy just like everybody else. Just like there had been no mercy for their son who had yet to be born; probably skewered just as sharply as his mother had been, with a kitchen knife having been brutally sliced through his intestines._

_His entire family had been wiped out that night. The rainfall outside was a continuous pitter-patter to his sorrow--a powerful litany that was being disguised, as coyly and as saliently, as teardrops. Just like so many others, he had lost everything that night, and yet he had also gained a little something, too._

_After setting me down in his rustic pick-up, he wrapped me up in a gray, moth-eaten blanket that he had found in the backseat of his truck, gotten behind the wheel, and driven away. He had sped away from my house so fast it had felt like there were still demons on our tails; as if their shadows were still gaining upon us. He kept driving until we reached an abandoned mine where a number of Immunes had decided to take up refuge (as told by the only non-static radio station that was still broadcasting), and it was as depressing a number of survivors back then as it was today._

_As I got older, I realized that the villains in our stories weren't strangers. They were just monsters, hidden within the shadows of the woods and masked in the faces of the people who had once been just like me, and maybe one day...would be me._

_Mine and Jared’s stories weren’t singular ones. Nor were they as sad as some of the ones we’d ever heard. We were all orphans in this tragedy. How could we not be when almost everyone we knew was gone or had the likelihood of being gone soon? We had all lost faith in our futures; faith in ourselves. We were the fellows on march, a procession of a dying breed gasping for oxygen. Humanity was thinning out—a travesty of the nonexistent and bereaved--lifeless and hopeless, just as Jared had been when he had found me. Bloodied and dried. Outworn. Just as They wanted us to be._

#

 **The doctor smiled warmly at Trystan, letting him know that he would begin his examination in just a few minutes and that he** should make use of one of the paperbacks upon the table to the left of him. Trystan ignored his advice. Instead, he kept up a steady, appraising look upon his doctor’s appearance. To say that he looked weary, would be an understatement. His thin, gray hair shined white and silver like the wisps that hung from the weeping willow across the street from Trystan’s cabin. His skin was crinkled and wrinkled to an extent where Trystan could hardly tell the difference between the dimples and the age lines etched across his face. That was how it was here, one either changed young, or remained immune to the virus to live long enough in the safety of the compound to die of natural causes. The doctor would soon succumb to the latter.

The drudgery of nearly two decades spent here had really taken its physical toll on the doctor, and at that moment, Trystan was unjustifiably resentful of the doctor’s wrinkles. They were an outward reminder of his possible, yet unlikely, future. With such a minuscule population of humanity living on about twenty acres of land, it was always a devastating blow to the community when it was announced that yet another young soul had been “escorted”, at gunpoint (with the cries of their loved ones their last herald of comfort), off the premises with only a canteen of water, a loaf of bread, a flint, and a threadbare blanket for survival--however short that survival lasted.

Soon, they would join the masses on the outskirts of the compound, and the remains of their blanket would be found during the next hunting party, not far from the border, yet not close enough for them to be seen as a threat. Trystan had never understood the Exiled’s thinking on that. If he received the worst possible news today, he would leave; travel far, far away from the constant buzzing of the fence, while he still had some rational thought, and take the coward's way out, his blanket having never been found. Just the thought of harming one of his fellow humans in the way that a Scalder could, made him break out in a nervous sweat. It wasn’t so much the fear of death, but the fear of causing it that both frightened and humbled him the most.

The doctor swiveled in his chair until he was staring at somewhere near the vicinity of Trystan’s chin. He probably thought that it would be bad luck to stare into a possible “infected’s” eyes.

Trystan was pulled free from his meandering thoughts when the Doctor opened his chapped lips and spoke in his trademark, monotonous voice.

“As you know, the best case scenario for you will be if my evaluation turns out to just be a formality. The statistical likelihood of you receiving a negative diagnosis for the R.V. is nearly forty percent. The left over sixty percent probably won’t come into effect for another two months if you are indeed affected. I will begin today by extracting a few vials of your blood. When that is completed, I shall perform an eye and tooth exam. You will be allowed to relax while I evaluate the entropagen gastroglycemic levels within your samples.” His (seemingly) knowledgeable words had quite the opposite effect upon Trystan, they made him worry even more--nearly sixty percent more.

After all, a failure would not just be a failure. Today, a failure would be a death sentence—a cruel salutation to a life that had spent its last chance and its last chunk of change. And, according to Ash, the latter option was not acceptable, not for him. _He will kick my ass to the fence and back if I get saddled with a positive diagnosis. A butt-kicking from my best friend--something to look forward to if I pass._ When _I pass. Yeah, when I pass._

The doctor was glaring daggers at Trystan by the end of his check-up. He had been squirming and flinching throughout the entire examination, unable to remain still--his nerves having been shot to hell. The doctor checked his microscope once again, his impatience with his patient splattered all over his unimpressed face. “If your results _do_ turn out to be negative, then for the next two years you’ll be spending nearly every week here. You do realize that a negative diagnosis right now does not necessarily mean that you are completely immune to the virus, yes? There is still a chance that you will contract it tomorrow or even a week from today.” _Okay, so maybe Ash did have a point--leatherface could really be an insensitive asshole at times._

After addressing him that final time, and without waiting for a confirmation nod, the doctor turned once more to his desk and then became exceedingly still. From behind, his back seemed to be ramrod straight; and yet, even worse, when he turned around he looked like a cartoon with its eyes bugging out of their sockets, trying to seek refuge from the threat right before them. Trystan knew what his results would be even before the doctor could inhale and exhale his first breath. _Holy shit! This wasn’t gonna be good._

Trystan’s breathing  rapidly sped up. An unsanctioned freak-out was blossoming from within his chest. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening--not to him. He was supposed to be the one to break the pattern. He was supposed to be like the doctor; living a life so mundane, so listless that when his time came, he would walk gracefully into the tunneled embrace of the moon’s light. He was supposed to be like Ash. He tore out of the office so fast that he knocked his chair over and nearly tripped over the welcome mat in his hurry to flee. The words, “We’re All Welcome Here” was streaking across his mind, fading slowly with each frantic step he took. He vaguely remembered hearing the doctor shout something about eighteen hours, nearly getting lost in the echo of his fading footsteps.

 _As if I didn’t know how long I have left in this compound before they come for me. As if I hadn’t witnessed this before_ ; _just as a bystander instead of the one being dragged towards the execution block._

He didn’t pay attention to where he was going. He just kept sprinting and heaving--a lackluster way for his mind to catch up with his body, and to understand what was happening. He ended up hiding out on the rooftop of the school building. He climbed the ladder, scaling the brick wall, foot by foot, like a person possessed. Each clatter of his sneakers upon the rungs were a deafening reminder that his childhood was now over.

He would never again share a friendly conversation with Ash. He would never again walk through the compound’s center and vie for a girl’s attention. He would never again enjoy life as a human. Soon, he would become a carcass, just a meat suit that's sole purpose would be to hold together the gamey sinews of a monster--the same monster that had destroyed his life and had murdered his mother in a frosty strike of apathy and hunger. He would become the mirror image of his nightmares--the stark face staring back at him from the white-tiled floors of his childhood.

The only difference, the only blood surrounding him, would be that which was seeping out from his own body and not from that of a helpless woman. He could never let it get that far. He wouldn’t.

He remained on the roof, hugging his knees to his chest and gazing down upon the compound that had been his home--had been his sanctuary. “Fitting,” he scoffed silently to himself, “to spend my last hours above the world. It will be like I never existed.” His thoughts wandered for a while, gaining tension and apprehension just like the frothy motion of the summer breeze.

“Tryst, come down from there, man! Please don’t make me come up there! You know how I feel about heights.”

Ash could be such a pansy sometimes.

His disruption of Trystan’s brooding really pissed him off this time. He wasn’t in the mood to cater to somebody else, and especially not to Ash. Ash was always a punk-ass whenever it came to him wanting to be alone and it seemed like their present circumstances hadn’t changed that one bit. _He had always been scared of letting me out of his sight for more than he had to. It was like he could tell that something bad was going to happen before it ever could_.

“Go away Ash. I know you know, so there’s no reason to pretend.” _No reason for anything at all._ “I just wanna be alone,” Trystan’s somber announcement was greeted with silence. His heavy panting was still encasing his hearing and blocking out everything else; therefore, he didn’t hear the random string of curse words that Ash was spewing as he climbed the ladder. If someone could crawl their way up a ladder, it would’ve been Ash.

When he had finished climbing, Ash placed a comforting, though cold, hand upon Trystan’s shoulder. Trystan flinched in surprise. He hadn’t realized that Ash had actually climbed the ladder when he had never been able to do it before. “It’s gonna be alright man. We’re gonna figure something out. We’re gonna be together no matter what, right? From shitty to shittier, yeah? No fuckin’ virus can stand between us.” Ash’s unfailing resolve did nothing to calm Trystan’s rapid heartbeat. Usually, no matter how annoying Ash could be, he was usually good as a soothing presence. _It seems that that has changed as well. I wonder if he can feel how fake his smile is? It was about as welcoming as a Scalder’s touch._

Ash should’ve realized that, in this moment, there was nothing he could say that would help. _It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters._ Even grief would become a meaningless word in just a few hours; a word without relation or substance. _Maybe after I’m gone Ash will finally be able to keep a serious face for more than five minutes. Now that, that right there, is a dying wish._

They remained like that, with Trystan rocking slightly back and forth, still having a death grip around his legs, while Ash squeezed his shoulder in random spurts. Their faces contorting randomly at different times, their thoughts different, and yet their anger and denial still resonating at the same frequency. Ash was blind to a solution, while Trystan had already had time to prepare himself for this outcome. He knew that there was only one solution left available to him, the only solution that was the least harrowing, and the least of a gamble.

It was then, while he was still lost in his self-pitying thoughts, that he heard the gut-wrenching screams of his neighbors. They were like a broken record in Trystan’s mind; skipping, not tracks, but pitch and volume until they sounded like a shrieking cacophony of banshees all around him. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood at attention and flicked back and forth as if trying to dodge a cold breeze.

Accompanying them were the loud, urgent bell chimes from the village’s center. Cobwebs were being smashed between the bell and the clapper, making the chimes sound slightly dulled. The clanging signaled an end to his peaceful life; an end to their hidden society. The first _clang_ was a warning; while the final knoll was like a swift _snap_ of a predator’s jaws: deafening in its finality. The Scalders had breached the compound!

“How the hell did they get past the electric fence?” Trystan exclaimed with a slight tremor to his voice. Ash didn’t know what to say, his eyes were darting back and forth along the ground that was below them--the ground that was no longer the safest or most reassuring of places. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.” A steady stream of those whispered words was all Trystan could hear coming from his petrified friends mouth.

He stuck his head over the edge of the rooftop and saw that his neighbors were tearing down the streets with crowbars and hammers, guns and shovels. They were amassing an army; an army that was, sadly, no more effective than an old-time militia full of farmers with pitchforks. However, they knew that any little thing would be more effective than fighting empty-handed against the Scalder’s. Any little thing would help against the monsters that were invading their home, invading their lives; because they knew, as well as anybody else, what it would feel like to be touched by a Scalder and to see it be done to their spouses, to their friends, to their children.

It would feel like a scalding coldness that would spread and spread until the only feelings that remained were emptiness, sadness, and an overwhelming confusion when nothing but frost was left of the blood coursing through their veins. The crystallized fractals would scratch and tear at their arteries, making them wish that they were dead. It would feel as if they were being flayed from the inside out, and yet still brimming with life.

Trystan’s heart began to beat so erratically and franticly that he hardly knew if it could keep up. His neighbor's screams took him back to that night fifteen years ago when that Scalder had been in his house; when its emaciated limbs had been reaching for--

 _Enough of that_ \--he shook his head to stop those thoughts from running rampant in his mind and leaving him paralyzed. He had to do something. He had to figure out a way to help _._ He sent a glance towards Ash, wishing for him to have a plan, to have an escape, but Ash just looked back at him with a look that was stricken with grief, with fear. _Dammit, I have no time for this._

He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and hurried to the ladder. He didn’t look over his shoulder to see if Ash was following him--he would or he wouldn’t. A little, selfish part of him wished that Ash would never thaw from the stasis he was in and follow him down the ladder. He would be safer above ground, away from the monsters that, in a few hours, would become Trystan’s new kin. _That’s right, I have nothing to lose anymore. Maybe one of them will get the upper hand and kill me before I can join them. There, that’s a better death wish. Ash would be proud. It was morbid as hell, but it was at least a, kind of, form of hope, a wish, for nothingness._

As he scurried down the steps, his hasty actions and turbulent thoughts made him clumsy and his right foot lost traction with one of the rungs. He fell to the ground, harder and faster than he had meant to. Darkness overcame him and pulled him down tighter than ever within its embrace. His last thoughts were inconclusive. They were anxious. _Was that a shadow above me? Was that a voice calling my name? Mom? Death?...Ash?_

#

When Trystan regained consciousness, his eyelids fluttered open and he gazed upwards.

He gulped.

There was a nightmare in the sky. The same nightmare that had starred in nearly all of his dreams since his mother had been taken from him. His emotions waxed and waned just like the Hunter’s moon overhead; its yellow sheen coating the night sky and masking the constellations that had once brought familiarity and comfort to him. It was the same haunting sight that had greeted his world fifteen years ago and that had squandered the ignorance that had once been prevalent among his race. It was a sight of illumination, of heartache, of hollowed out eyes. And it had decided to grace our vision once more.

His overly sensitive eyes took a while to adjust to the darkness. It was like the night had tossed its hair and left not one star, just sleek darkness, for him to lay under. His touch-starved skin felt like sand being battered and seared by a storm. It felt rough and slightly wet, almost as if a dew had coalesced upon it and settled down and cooled. His hands curled into fists of confusion...or was it pain? There was a crusty residue nestled within the grooves of his palms. _It couldn’t be mud_ , he thought, _it didn’t have the same consistency_ . His lethargic mind tried to process his surroundings and relay feedback to the rest of his senses _...and it was itchy as hell._

He stood up, his bones creaking and popping, and took halting steps towards the human-shaped lumps on the ground. Those lumps were his neighbors, his brethren. Red and clear streaks shined pearl-like around the orifices of their faces. Rivulets of emptiness and sorrow was all that he saw as he gazed upon the ground. Their eyes were so empty, so barren, their lights had gone out just like the night sky, illuminated under the weight of the moon’s sight. After just a brief interlude, he took a deep breath and gazed forward. His eyesight was level with the horizon; an ignorance of the horror right before him, right behind him, and right below him. _Did it have to come to this?_

Within Trystan’s skull there was an ache that he couldn’t escape. When he stood up, he could feel a rivulet of blood dropping sluggishly through his hair and down his neck, almost as if a tribal tattoo was being branded upon his tanned skin. He couldn’t remember what had happened. His synapses were firing but they must have been getting lost along the way to his limbs. His blood was boiling to new temperatures. His emerald eyes were like sandstones slapping drily against his eyelids. All he could smell was a cloying thickness of metal in the air…of rust, of dirt, of _iron_.

That metallic scent brought all of his memories flooding back. The Scalders had attacked! He had had to play witness to the aftermath of everyone's hopes falling, flickering, and dying as the wind had passed them by. Within the recesses of his mind, one thought kept ricocheting back and forth until it became an ambiguous query: _Where was Ash?_ Within people’s minds there had always lived a dying threat; _Where was Ash?_ a threat that was no longer a possibility… _Where was Ash?_ it had become a reality. _Where was Ash?_ _Where was Ash_ _Where was Ash_ _Where was Ash_

It was surprising that it had taken them so long to attack. It was a well-known fact that Scalder’s were capable of cognitive thought--an advantage that, weirdly, they had yet to exploit. They must have known humans were still out there, that they were still in hiding; that they had become recluses in a world where they had once had autonomy in. There had been no more symmetry left in this world, no more guessing between life and death--there was just resignation in the hearts of every human.

They must have known that humans were defenseless against them. Scalders weren’t pack creatures. Their independence was the first thing they gained after their transformation. They were scavengers and phantoms of the night. A horde of humans versus one of them and they would still win, decimating the human population to even more insignificant numbers. Humans were here, they were theirs for the taking, and yet they hadn’t taken the plunge yet. Perhaps they were waiting. Perhaps they liked the power. Perhaps they liked the game and just didn’t want it to end. That was okay--humans didn’t want it to end either. _So what had changed? What made them finally attack?_

He staggered even closer to the empty faces of his neighbors, some of them he couldn’t even recognize; their faces having been mauled and ground into chunky bits of bloody basins. His gaze wouldn’t let him focus on the others. They were even harder to look at, with their mouths hanging open, gaping wide, and eternally stuck in echoing screams of agony. Their uplifted eyebrows resented me, questioned me, _why them?_ _Why was the Touch their fate, their death, when the other way was so much faster...so much better?_  The sky began to lighten. Streaks of morning light began to glisten upon the ground. It shined like rubies. A terrible beauty that spoke volumes of fragility and of torn skin.

He didn’t want to confront the true reason for his unerring perusal of the dead; his true reason for putting himself through the scarring and the unending guilt that accompanied his every footfall. He couldn’t find Ash’s body on the floor, and he was too scared to shout his name and draw undue attention towards himself. His heart and mind grappled with this decision while he continued his silent search. The “not-knowing” was an arduous charring upon his heart, and yet the “not-finding” was a much-needed reprieve to its burn.

He heard a muffled noise behind him; a scuff of shoes against the dirt-packed road. His mind started blaring the same word over and over again with misguided hope. “ _Ash Ash Ash Ash Ash”_

He turned, faster than he thought was possible and saw a lonely silhouette of a girl and not the comforting smirk of his lost friend. Trystan’s eyes flooded with unshed tears, tears that were sheathed in disappointment, tears that just wouldn’t fall. He couldn’t make out her face until she was just a few feet away from him. She looked to be about three years away from her nineteenth birthday, and whom he had noticed from afar but had never held a conversation with.

His feet waded through puddles on the ground, thicker and darker than they should’ve been. He stopped, just a few feet away from the girl. It was unnerving how silent she was. He felt like he should say something. That he should try to reassure her just like how Jared had for him all those years ago. She was older and more aware of what had happened than he had been fifteen years ago, and yet she still looked lost. She looked like she was hoping for some comfort, comfort from any source available to her. The world began to blur as he saw the wintry skin of his mother right beside him, the only comfort he could remember clearly. The only comfort that could embrace him along with the red puddle that was getting warmer and warmer as his mother was getting colder. His brain was scattered. He didn’t know what to say.

 _What could I say? That everything was going to be okay? That she should just ignore everything that had happened? That she should just ignore the gore, the lifeblood, that was spreading like a scorched ocean of bodies all around us? That the porous ground_ wasn’t _a parasite, sucking up as much blood as it could and yet still remaining parched?_

He remained speechless; his mind and mouth stuck on a permanent hiatus.

His legs buckled so suddenly that he almost got whiplash. A scream of insanity ripped out of his throat and into the nighttime air, like a bullet having been released from a trigger-happy gunman. He was confused. He hadn’t noticed anyone else around him. The girl was the only living being in the vicinity, and yet she was in too much of a stupor to be the bloodthirsty monster causing him this much pain. _So where was it coming from?_

All of a sudden, the pain shifted and was focused unerringly within the confines of his mouth. The crack and grind of his incisors shifting and changing was all that he heard. The tearing sensation of his gums retracting and spreading like a moss within his gaping maw, was all that he could feel. It was more than he could endure.

He fell forward; his forehead now resting upon the blood soaked mud of the ground. His forearms sloshed about in the dirt, trying to hold his upper body steady. The pain was so immense that it masked the burning growth of his fingernails, and so he remained clueless to their hasty transformation. They had extended to at least two inches away from his fingertips when they had finally stopped growing.

When the searing pain abated, and he could think semi-coherent thoughts again, he catalogued all of the changes within his body. His physical differences were all that he could take note of in that moment; and yet he knew, deep down, that it was just a scratch upon the surface. That the stress of the night, that the morbid atmosphere of his surroundings had done something to him, something irreversible on the inside. _I wish Ash were here._

A hand reached out and grasped his shoulder. A light touch that had no place in this moment, in this world. He knew that it couldn’t be Ash. He refused to play a game with hope this time.

He sat up, his butt resting upon his heels. He looked forward; his eyesight level with the girl’s. She was gazing deep into his irises. In the reflection of her eyes, he noticed that _his_ eyes were shimmering like a dim light. He realized that she had, against all odds, become desensitized to the horror all around her. Enough that, in his pain, in his agony-filled stance, she had come closer and had knelt before him; making herself vulnerable and _exactly_ where he needed her in that moment. _Lord help me_ , but she looked like prey. She looked like a solution. She looked like his salvation.

 _She looks like mine_.

He lunged forward - a snarl upon his lips. His mouth was upturned, a grimace of joy and of hunger overtaking his features like the predators he had once been afraid of. She should’ve ran. She should’ve been afraid. And yet, she stayed exactly where she was; exhausted and accepting of all that she would lose. He reveled in the debauchery of her features. She was no longer of significance. She was like a body bag with an open zipper, free game for any scavenger within the proximity. His thoughts contradicted themselves, yet only one was winning out. _I have to stop!...I need to keep going._

Trystan rose to the balls of his feet; dragging his food along with him. He changed the angle of his neck so that he could gain a more direct supply of the blood that was seeping from within her pores. He felt rejuvenated. He felt alive. His veins were bulging and pulsating from beneath his cadaver-colored skin, and his throat felt bridled with dryness. He kept a steady hold upon the human; so strong that he began to crack the fragile bones within its arms until the scattered shards began moving, in tandem, to the clenching and unclenching of his fingers.

An arc of blood was spewing forth from the wounds in its neck and upper shoulders as if from a geyser. His shirt was drenched in the vital fluids of its body, and he reveled in the devastation upon its face. Its mouth gaped open and closed, moving in a comical imitation of words. It was as if it was trying to speak. It was as if it thought that it had anything of import to say. It was as if it thought that it had a purpose in this world other than to play at death and to hope that he wouldn’t drain it entirely of life.

 _I could get used to this incessant, silent scream of agony. This human was_ my _plaything;_ my _food…and so it could_ , _if it wanted to, put up a little bit of a fight. I would have thought that it’d be fighting more, but I guess the weak will always be weak—even when faced with death. How boring._

It remained stationary, like a piece of furniture, hoping to be overlooked, yet knowing that it was the only game within his reach. It remained in his grasp; no longer twitching or making sounds; its guttural screams becoming even more mute. _What a pity._ He let it go and it toppled to the ground with a _thunk_ of dead meat. _Hmph. I guess it could still make noise after all._

He took a step forward; his food source lying in the dirt behind him. He didn't spare it another glance or thought. He just kept walking until he reached the hole in the fence that was still gaping open. A wound that had festered and left just enough room for an infection to spread and take over.

He stood tall in the wind. A notion of the past—it slithered by. His surroundings billowing before his eyes. How did it come to this? This moment where everything had changed. He gazed upwards. Around the moon was a halo; its aureole encircling him within its diameter. It was so blinding it scorched his retinas and made him want to lift his elongated neck towards the heavens. The gold and ruby hue that was creeping across the night sky was slowly making its journey towards dawn, and so it put a stopper to his desires…at least for the time being. His fun had to be put on hold for now, but for tomorrow…well, there would always be more food to be had.

After all, he had become a calefaction in his own right; a brander of death; a freezer of life; a pauser of hope in a world built upon strife. He had become the villain of his story; of his mother’s story; of humanity's story. His future had slyly crept up on him. His demise was no longer in question. His eyesight was no longer a blurry lens. He felt no need for hope, for salvation.

           …and the only way that he could respond to his loved one’s woeful, sorrowful cries of pain and anguish was to laugh triumphantly—he was no longer crippled by humanity like they had been. He was something better now, something right, something natural, something _pure_.

And his disease had only just begun.

#

But then, nearly lost in his own consciousness, was the mantra that had plagued him from before. The same repetitious heralding that had engaged his mind, engaged his senses, until he had become distracted with the body. His mind wasn’t able to force it to the forefront of his thoughts, his bloodlust was too overwhelming, and so it hung back--forgotten as if it had never mattered. Ash Ash Ash Ash Ash As if...as if it had never lived.

As if it were still lost.

As if he had never cared.

 


End file.
